eHomer has been active in the building materials market since 2016 and its mission is to make the building materials market convenient, transparent and fast. Over the years, the eHomer team has built a well-functioning e-store and most of the turnover comes through the e-channel.
eHomer also sells successfully outside Estonia through its e-store, and we have made several special solutions for them at Lumav to make this possible.
More products – the customers find what they need
eHomer wanted to offer its customers a wider range of products without investing in additional warehouse space and staff. Customers in the building materials sector want to order from a single supplier, both for convenience and to save on delivery costs, which are higher in the building materials sector due to volumes, dimensions and delivery conditions.
The e-store team had invested in improving the quality of product information in the previous development phase with Lumav. To this end, an analysis of the company’s customers, competitors and internal processes was carried out, and the AS IS and TO BE processes were mapped to the product enrichment team. As a result of the analysis, a technical solution in the form of the product enrichment software Akeneo PIM was implemented and the necessary interfaces to the business software were created. The introduction of PIM multiplied the speed of product insertion and the technical prerequisites were in place for a higher number of products to be added with superior accuracy.
eHomer had several directions in which to invest strategically. Different options were considered and it was decided that increasing the assortment would be the most profitable.
Solution
The client’s representative Jako Tsäko from eHomer wanted the technical solution to be scalable, i.e. to allow for the addition of new suppliers in the future. For this reason, we looked at the bigger picture in the technical analysis and considered future possibilities.
As a technical solution, there were two options on the table – either to build the solution from scratch on Akeneo PIM or to use a separate ready-to-use licensed software service (Lumav Sync).
Since the rule is that virtually every supplier uses a different format, structure and/or access options for its data, it is more cost-effective to use an existing scalable service as an interface solution, where the vast majority of these problems are solved or can be configured with reasonable ease. This is the reason why the Sync service was chosen for the eHomer solution.
Initially, the system was interfaced with two suppliers, with the plan to test the processes thoroughly in order to add new suppliers to the system in the near future. The solution set up is the basis for connecting several supplier databases and the next two will be operational soon. In the foreseeable future, it will be necessary to create rules in case of overlapping assortments.
Adding an external assortment to the product range means different delivery conditions for the products and, among other things, the question had to be solved of what happens if there is both a stock product and an external assortment product in the shopping cart.
The architecture of the solution is briefly as follows:
- Sync queries external supplier for products, categories, stock, attributes/filters, prices.
- Sync determines the selling prices of a product according to various rules
- All product information is sent to PIM, where it is enriched and translated
- New product goes on sale in the e-channel
- A new product appears in the ERP only with the first order
A more detailed view is a trade secret of eHomer. There are many paths to success, and Lumav can help each client find the best solution for their business.
Summary
As a result, the number of products offered in eHomer’s e-store has increased by 2,500 in the first month.
However, more products doesn’t automatically mean more sales, and the problem of how to find the right product for the customer needs to be solved. eHomer’s team has also invested in AI-based Klevu Search, which changes its behaviour according to customer behaviour and helps to find the right solution among the increased product range.
eHomer is a Lumav customer since 2021 with its Magento 2, coming to us for maintenance with a newly completed e-store. Previously, Lumav has provided eHomer with Magento 1 e-store service from 2017 to 2018. We have not had the privilege to build a new solution for eHomer, but we have had the privilege to further develop the existing one and contribute to business growth.
Many thanks to Jako and the eHomer team for their cooperation and great discussions! There are many more exciting solutions in the pipeline and thank you for choosing us as your partner.
“During our 15 years in the e-commerce business, we’ve tried all the major and some of the smaller Magento developers in Estonia, from A to Z, and finally came back to Lumav. What I like about Lumav is the honest and open communication – we can talk about things openly and solutions to problems are found. They take feedback into account and have constantly improved their processes. Some jobs have taken longer, but with Lumav I can be sure that the job will get done and done well.”
Jako Tsäko
eHomer Member of the Board
